<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/WebPage">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <title>Vitess / Contributing to Vitess</title>

        <!-- Webfont -->
    <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto:400,100,100italic,300,300italic,400italic,500,500italic,700,700italic,900,900italic' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
    
    <!--<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon.png">-->

    <!-- Bootstrap -->
    <link href="/libs/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">

    <!-- HTML5 shim and Respond.js for IE8 support of HTML5 elements and media queries -->
    <!-- WARNING: Respond.js doesn't work if you view the page via file:// -->
    <!--[if lt IE 9]>
      <script src="https://oss.maxcdn.com/html5shiv/3.7.2/html5shiv.min.js"></script>
      <script src="https://oss.maxcdn.com/respond/1.4.2/respond.min.js"></script>
    <![endif]-->

    <!-- Styles -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/site.css" />
    <!-- Font Awesome icons -->
    <link href="/libs/font-awesome-4.4.0/css/font-awesome.min.css"
          rel="stylesheet"
          type="text/css">
    
    <!-- jQuery (necessary for Bootstrap's JavaScript plugins) -->
    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <!-- Include all compiled plugins (below), or include individual files as needed -->
    <script src="/libs/bootstrap/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>


    <!-- metadata -->
    <meta name="og:title" content="Vitess / Contributing to Vitess"/>
    <meta name="og:image" content="/images/vitess_logo_with_border.svg"/>
    <meta name="og:description" content="Vitess is a database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL."/>

    <link rel="icon" href="/images/vitess_logo_icon_size.png" type="image/png">

    
    <script>
  (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
  ga('create', 'UA-60219601-1', 'auto');
  ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>

    
  </head>
  <body class="docs" id="top_of_page">

    <span id="toc-depth" data-toc-depth="h2,h3"></span>


    <nav id="common-nav" class="navbar navbar-fixed-top inverse">
  <div class="container">
    <!-- Brand and toggle get grouped for better mobile display -->
    <div class="navbar-header">
      <button type="button" class="navbar-toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbar-collapse-1">
        <span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span>
        <span class="icon-bar"></span>
        <span class="icon-bar"></span>
        <span class="icon-bar"></span>
      </button>
      <a class="navbar-brand" href="/">
        <img class="logo" src="/images/vitess_logo_with_border.svg" alt="Vitess">
      </a>
    </div>

    <!-- Collect the nav links, forms, and other content for toggling -->
    <div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="navbar-collapse-1">
      <ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right" id="standard-menu-links">
        <li><a href="/overview/">Overview</a></li>
        <li><a href="/user-guide/introduction.html">Guides</a></li>
        <li><a href="/reference/vitess-api.html">Reference</a></li>
        <li><a href="http://blog.vitess.io">Blog</a></li>
        <li><a href="https://github.com/youtube/vitess"><i class="fa fa-github"></i> GitHub</a></li>
        <!-- Hide link to blog unless we have actual posts -->
        <!-- <li><a href="/blog/" title="">Blog</a></li> -->
      </ul>
      <ul class="nav nav-stacked mobile-left-nav-menu" id="collapsed-left-menu">
                <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r no-top-margin">Overview</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/overview/">What is Vitess</a></li>
            <li><a href="/overview/scaling-mysql.html">Scaling MySQL with Vitess</a></li>
            <li><a href="/overview/concepts.html">Key Concepts</a></li>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Getting Started</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/getting-started/">Run Vitess on Kubernetes</a>
              <ul style="display: block">
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/getting-started/docker-build.html">Custom Docker Build</a></li>
              </ul>
            </li>
            <li><a href="/getting-started/local-instance.html">Run Vitess Locally</a></li>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">User Guide</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/user-guide/introduction.html">Introduction</a>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/client-libraries.html">Client Libraries</a>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/backup-and-restore.html">Backing Up Data</a>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/reparenting.html">Reparenting</a></li>
            <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/schema-management.html">Schema Management</a></li>
              <ul style="display: block">
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/vschema.html">VSchema Guide</a></li>
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/schema-swap.html">Schema Swap (Tutorial)</a></li>
              </ul>
            <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/sharding.html">Sharding</a>
              <ul style="display: block">
                <li><a href="/user-guide/horizontal-sharding-workflow.html">Horizontal Sharding (Tutorial, automated)</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/horizontal-sharding.html">Horizontal Sharding (Tutorial, manual)</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/sharding-kubernetes-workflow.html">Sharding in Kubernetes (Tutorial, automated)</a></li>
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/sharding-kubernetes.html">Sharding in Kubernetes (Tutorial, manual)</a></li>
              </ul>
            </li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/vitess-sequences.html">Vitess Sequences</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/mysql-server-protocol.html">MySQL Server Protocol</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/vitess-replication.html">Vitess and Replication</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/update-stream.html">Update Stream</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/row-based-replication.html">Row Based Replication</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/topology-service.html">Topology Service</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/transport-security-model.html">Transport Security Model</a></li>
            <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/launching.html">Launching</a>
              <ul style="display: block">
                <li><a href="/user-guide/scalability-philosophy.html">Scalability Philosophy</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/production-planning.html">Production Planning</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/server-configuration.html">Server Configuration</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/twopc.html">2PC Guide</a></li>
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/troubleshooting.html">Troubleshooting</a></li>
              </ul>
            </li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/upgrading.html">Upgrading</a></li>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Reference Guides</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/reference/vitess-api.html">Vitess API</a>
            <li><a href="/reference/vtctl.html">vtctl Commands</a>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Other Resources</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/resources/presentations.html">Presentations</a>
            <li><a href="http://blog.vitess.io/">Blog</a>
            <li><a href="/resources/roadmap.html">Roadmap</a>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Contributing</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/contributing/">Contributing to Vitess</a>
            <li><a href="/contributing/github-workflow.html">GitHub Workflow</a>
            <li><a href="/contributing/code-reviews.html">Code Reviews</a>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Internal</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/internal/">Overview</a>
            <li><a href="/internal/release-instructions.html">Release Instructions</a>
            <li><a href="/internal/publish-website.html">Publish Website</a>
          </ul>
        </li>

        <div>
          <form method="get" action="/search/">
            <input id="search-form" name="q" type="text" placeholder="Search">
          </form>
        </div>

        <li><a href="https://github.com/youtube/vitess" id="collapsed-left-menu-repo-link"><i class="fa fa-github"></i> GitHub</a></li>
      </ul>
    </div><!-- /.navbar-collapse -->
  </div><!-- /.container-fluid -->
</nav>

    
<div id="masthead">
  <div class="container">
    <div class="row">
      <div class="col-md-9">
        <h1>Contributing to Vitess</h1>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>


<div class="container">
    <div class="row scroll-margin" id="toc-content-row">
    <div class="col-md-2" id="leftCol">
      <ul class="nav nav-stacked mobile-left-nav-menu" id="sidebar">
                <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r no-top-margin">Overview</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/overview/">What is Vitess</a></li>
            <li><a href="/overview/scaling-mysql.html">Scaling MySQL with Vitess</a></li>
            <li><a href="/overview/concepts.html">Key Concepts</a></li>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Getting Started</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/getting-started/">Run Vitess on Kubernetes</a>
              <ul style="display: block">
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/getting-started/docker-build.html">Custom Docker Build</a></li>
              </ul>
            </li>
            <li><a href="/getting-started/local-instance.html">Run Vitess Locally</a></li>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">User Guide</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/user-guide/introduction.html">Introduction</a>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/client-libraries.html">Client Libraries</a>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/backup-and-restore.html">Backing Up Data</a>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/reparenting.html">Reparenting</a></li>
            <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/schema-management.html">Schema Management</a></li>
              <ul style="display: block">
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/vschema.html">VSchema Guide</a></li>
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/schema-swap.html">Schema Swap (Tutorial)</a></li>
              </ul>
            <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/sharding.html">Sharding</a>
              <ul style="display: block">
                <li><a href="/user-guide/horizontal-sharding-workflow.html">Horizontal Sharding (Tutorial, automated)</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/horizontal-sharding.html">Horizontal Sharding (Tutorial, manual)</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/sharding-kubernetes-workflow.html">Sharding in Kubernetes (Tutorial, automated)</a></li>
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/sharding-kubernetes.html">Sharding in Kubernetes (Tutorial, manual)</a></li>
              </ul>
            </li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/vitess-sequences.html">Vitess Sequences</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/mysql-server-protocol.html">MySQL Server Protocol</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/vitess-replication.html">Vitess and Replication</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/update-stream.html">Update Stream</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/row-based-replication.html">Row Based Replication</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/topology-service.html">Topology Service</a></li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/transport-security-model.html">Transport Security Model</a></li>
            <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/launching.html">Launching</a>
              <ul style="display: block">
                <li><a href="/user-guide/scalability-philosophy.html">Scalability Philosophy</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/production-planning.html">Production Planning</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/server-configuration.html">Server Configuration</a></li>
                <li><a href="/user-guide/twopc.html">2PC Guide</a></li>
                <li style="padding-bottom: 0"><a href="/user-guide/troubleshooting.html">Troubleshooting</a></li>
              </ul>
            </li>
            <li><a href="/user-guide/upgrading.html">Upgrading</a></li>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Reference Guides</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/reference/vitess-api.html">Vitess API</a>
            <li><a href="/reference/vtctl.html">vtctl Commands</a>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Other Resources</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/resources/presentations.html">Presentations</a>
            <li><a href="http://blog.vitess.io/">Blog</a>
            <li><a href="/resources/roadmap.html">Roadmap</a>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Contributing</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/contributing/">Contributing to Vitess</a>
            <li><a href="/contributing/github-workflow.html">GitHub Workflow</a>
            <li><a href="/contributing/code-reviews.html">Code Reviews</a>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="submenu">
          <h4 class="arrow-r">Internal</h4>
          <ul style="display: none">
            <li><a href="/internal/">Overview</a>
            <li><a href="/internal/release-instructions.html">Release Instructions</a>
            <li><a href="/internal/publish-website.html">Publish Website</a>
          </ul>
        </li>

        <div>
          <form method="get" action="/search/">
            <input id="search-form" name="q" type="text" placeholder="Search">
          </form>
        </div>

      </ul>
    </div>
    <div class="col-md-3" id="rightCol">
      <div class="nav nav-stacked" id="tocSidebar">
        <div id="toc"></div>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="col-md-7" id="centerCol">
      <div id="centerTextCol">
        <h1 id="contributing-to-vitess">Contributing to Vitess</h1>

<p>You want to contribute to Vitess? That&#39;s awesome!</p>

<p>In the past we have reviewed and accepted many external contributions. Examples are the Java JDBC driver, the PHP PDO driver or vtgate v3 improvements.</p>

<p>We&#39;re looking forward to any contribution! Before you start larger contributions, make sure to reach out first and discuss your plans with us.</p>

<p>This page describes for new contributors how to make yourself familiar with Vitess and the programming language Go.</p>

<h2 id="learning-go">Learning Go</h2>

<p>Vitess was one of the early adaptors of <a href="https://golang.org/">Google&#39;s programming language Go</a>.</p>

<p>We love it for its simplicity (e.g. compared to C++ or Java) and performance (e.g. compared to Python).</p>

<p>Contributing to our server code will require you to learn Go. We recommend to read the following resources.</p>

<h3 id="go-tour">Go Tour</h3>

<p><a href="https://tour.golang.org/">https://tour.golang.org/</a></p>

<p>The Go tour is a browser based tutorial which explains the different concepts of the programming language.
It&#39;s interactive i.e. you can change and run all examples on the right side.
The later steps also have specific exercises which you&#39;re supposed to implement yourself.
It&#39;s a lot of fun and demonstrates how simple it is to write Go code.</p>

<h3 id="go-readability">Go Readability</h3>

<p>Internally at Google, code reviews are subject to an additional &quot;readability&quot; review.</p>

<p>A readability reviewer ensures that the reviewee is writing idiomatic code and following the programming language&#39;s style guide.</p>

<p>While there&#39;s no Go style guide, there is a set of recommendations in the Go community which add up to an implicit style guide.
To make sure you&#39;re writing idiomatic Go code, please read the following documents:</p>

<ul>
<li>Go Readablity slides: <a href="https://talks.golang.org/2014/readability.slide">https://talks.golang.org/2014/readability.slide</a>

<ul>
<li>Talk about Go readability with many specific examples.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>&quot;Effective Go&quot;: <a href="https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html">https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html</a>

<ul>
<li>Recommendations for writing good Go code.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Go Code Review Comments: <a href="https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/CodeReviewComments">https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/CodeReviewComments</a> 

<ul>
<li>The closest thing to a style guide.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>

<h3 id="other-resources">Other Resources</h3>

<p>If you&#39;re unsure about Go&#39;s behavior or syntax, we recommend to look it up in the specification: <a href="https://golang.org/ref/spec">https://golang.org/ref/spec</a>
It is well written and easy to understand.</p>

<h3 id="appreciating-go">Appreciating Go</h3>

<p>After using Go for several weeks, we hope that you&#39;ll start to love Go as much as we do. </p>

<p>In our opinion, the song &quot;Write in Go&quot; from ScaleAbility, a Google acapella band, perfectly captures what&#39;s so special about Go. Watch it and enjoy that you learnt Go: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJvEIjRBSDA">www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJvEIjRBSDA</a></p>

<h2 id="learning-vitess">Learning Vitess</h2>

<p>Before diving into the Vitess codebase, make yourself familiar with the system and run it yourself:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Read the <a href="/overview/">What is Vitess</a> page, in particular the architecture section.</p></li>
<li><p>Read the <a href="/overview/concepts.html">Vitess concepts</a> and the <a href="/user-guide/sharding.html">Sharding</a> page.</p>

<ul>
<li>We also recommend to look at our <a href="/resources/presentations.html">latest presentations</a>. They contain many illustrations which help understanding how Vitess works in detail.</li>
<li>After studying the pages, try to answer the following question (click expand to see the answer):
<details> 
<summary>
Let&#39;s assume a keyspace with 256 range-based shards: What is the name of the first, the second and the last shard?
</summary>
-01, 01-02, ff-
</details></li>
</ul></li>
<li><p>Go through the <a href="/getting-started/">Vitess Kubernetes tutorial</a>.</p>

<ul>
<li>While going through the tutorial, look back at the <a href="/overview/#architecture">architecture</a> and match the processes you start in Kubernetes with the boxes in the diagram.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>

      </div>
    </div>
  </div>

</div>

    <div class="page-spacer"></div>
    <footer role="contentinfo" id="site-footer">
  <nav role="navigation" class="menu bottom-menu">
    
    <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/vitess" target="_blank">Contact: vitess@googlegroups.com</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>·</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;
    <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/vitess-announce" target="_blank">Announcements</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>·</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;
    &#169; 2017 <a href="/">Vitess</a> powered by <a href="https://developers.google.com/open-source/">Google Inc</a>
  </nav>
</footer>


        <!-- jQuery (necessary for Bootstrap's JavaScript plugins) -->
<!--    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.2/jquery.min.js"></script>   -->
    <!-- Include all compiled plugins (below), or include individual files as needed -->
<!--
    <script src="/libs/bootstrap/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
-->
    <!-- Include the common site javascript -->
    <script src="/js/common.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>


  </body>
</html>
